Fancy

Fancy over Indian River Merritt Island, FL

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Sun n Fun with fancy

Fancy and I flew a number of times in April and the most noteworthy flight was when Ben Charvet and I took her over to Sun n Fun one day. We departed Dunn at about 7:30 and flew down to Lake X and then direct to Lake Parker for the arrival to the show. Every time the controller at the power plant mentioned a yellow plane Fancy wagged her wings. Anyway once it was our turn to wag our wings to acknowledge the controller we complied and were instructed to follow the Piper Cub in front of us. The controller was saying “everyone, nose to tail maintain 100 knots.” The Cub pilot in front of us responded by saying he was unable to maintain over 60 knots. Fancy slowed to 80 mph and we seemed to maintain our spacing at that speed. At the golf course between the white round water and the wedding cake tower headed for the airport we switched to the tower freq. Still following the Cub and I was paying a lot of attention to the Cub, concentrating on keeping the spacing when the tower told me to turn base, now! It was a little odd because we were no where near the end of the runway. We turned base to final in a kind of sloppy manner and managed to get headed down the runwayTowards our landing spot, the green circle. We had to power up to fly to the green dot. The controller kept saying “fly all the way to the green circle.” The problem was that we were so low when we turned final I couldn’t see the green spot on the runway. No problem though, we just added a little power and flew till we saw the green and landed on it. There was some wind from the right but it didn’t bother Fancy much and she made a smooth landing. We taxied to the end of 27 right and then made a 180 and taxied all the way back to the East end of the parking for general aviation planes. Nice flight! Towards the end of the show Ben and I walked back to where we had parked and waited for the show to end and the field to open. As soon as the red flag that signaled the re opening of the field was down, a lot of airplane engines came to life around us. We started Fancy and taxied out of the grass onto the taxiway and were in line about 100 spots back from the take off spot. Twenty minutes later we got the signal that it was our turn and in a few seconds we were flying again. The procedure for departure takes you three miles out before you can turn to an on course heading. We flew a little north of Lake Parker and turned east. We could see arrivals flying that course. A few go fast airplanes flew by us as we turned for Lake X again and then direct to Dunn. Wind at Dunn 080 at 8 so we did a straight in to runway 4. Another lucky landing! Two hours and eight minutes total flying…..Fun!